Excessive items scanned by virus scanner

[MariaAZ]

I reloaded Windows on my computer a few weeks ago and it is now taking forever to scan! MalAwareBytes Anti-Malware tells me it scans something like 500000 items and takes something like 10 hours! I used the same program before I reloaded the machine and it never took that long or had that many items to scan.

I went through Explorer and checked the number of files in every folder and could only come up with around 100000 or so. Even if the program counts registry entries it never took this long to scan.

What on earth is going on... how can I find out why there are suddenly so many items? I checked the logs, there are no identified viruses and I make sure I update my definitions every day.

[arabian knight]

Are you scanning with your antiMalware Program or just your Antivirus program??
I am asking that because of the title of the post Items scanned by Virus Scanner~! Which is not the same Program as your Anti-malware one.
My Anti Malwear has 2 settings One is a Quick scan still takes for a half an hour.
The other setting a a "complete malware scan and takes much longer and goes through file after file after file.
And my Virus scans 300,000 and takes hours.
Both Programs are different and look for different things.

[MariaAZ]

I use PCTools antivirus which shows the same number of files. I mentioned the other program as I had that one on the previous install but a different antivirus. I DO know that before it only took about an hour or so to do an entire scan in both the antivirus and the malware scanner and now it's more like 10 hours.

[arabian knight]

OK malware is taking so long. Is there 2 settings?
Perform a Quick Scan
Perform a Full Scan

My has 2 settings on the malware program
Full scan although 10 hours is ridiculously long. My full scan is about 2 hours and with just under 300,000 But even at 500,000 it should not be taking that long.
Now in System Scan if a hidden program either starts up or shuts down, THAT then Starts the System Scan ( scan disc ) All over again from the beginning. And takes several hours then, maybe something like that is going on.

[MariaAZ]

I'll check, but I'm still wondering why I have so many items. I didn't have close to half a million two weeks ago when I reloaded Windows, and I don't even have all the programs loaded yet. Somewhere there have to be a lot of items that weren't there before...

[MariaAZ]

Mystery solved. I watched the status bar while PCTools was scanning and noticed it was spending a lot of time on a PCTools temp folder. I checked the contents of the folder and found the excess files. Don't know how it happened, so I deleted the folder and uninstalled the program. I ran a registry repair program then reinstalled PCTools. The full scan now takes a more reasonable 1.5 hours to complete